


gravity

by emily_420



Category: Gintama
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-03
Updated: 2017-11-03
Packaged: 2019-01-28 21:50:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,854
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12616324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emily_420/pseuds/emily_420
Summary: The pull across the lonely darkness; the crash and deafening silence of impact; the reformation. And in the wake, something new.





	gravity

**Author's Note:**

> not entirely sure how i feel about this but it's time to release it into the wild

Across the rooftops, Tsukuyo saw that Sarutobi was sitting above some restaurants, her legs kicked out and her hair and scarf stirring in the chill breeze that skimmed through the evening. For a moment, she paused; sometimes, when Sarutobi kept her mouth shut, she looked positively ethereal, like a guardian spirit made of pure light. Her pale silhouette could seem removed from everything around it, disconnected, on a higher plane.

 _Like the moon_ , Tsukuyo thought, and then swiftly dumped all that romanticizing back in the recycle bin of her mind where it belonged. It was _Sarutobi,_ after all – she’d probably just been off stabbing someone for a horrendous amount of money. Tsukuyo leapt over to her and tried not to make a show of whiffing the air around the woman for the smell of blood.

“What’s up,” she said, coming to a crouch beside Sarutobi. “Who’d you off today?”

“Some rich lady’s ex-husband,” Sarutobi said without pause, her eyes unmoving from the stream of people passing through the street below. “He abused her and then tried to take the kids when she served him. No great loss, I’d say.”

“Men are the worst,” she replied idly, not really having much else to add; no matter what she thought of Sarutobi’s profession, she could never seem to fault her for her targets. From what Tsukuyo knew, they were usually scumbags who had it coming, corrupt assholes who’d left basic things like empathy long behind. Almost as if Sarutobi was single-handedly taking the collective revenge of Edo, though she’d no doubt deny it if it were suggested.

“Yeah,” Sarutobi said, then whipped around to her, all at once foolish again. “Hey, Tsukki, let’s go have dinner! I got paid a lot today and killing makes me crave carbs!”

Tsukuyo regarded her flatly. “I didn’t mean it like that,” she said, even though she did. “Don’t flatter yourself.”

“Don’t flatter yourself yourself,” she snapped, voice fluctuating as if to exemplify the vastness of her irritation. “I’m just sick of being alone, okay? And if you’re going to hang around you might as well hang around and stuff your face with me, you god-awful–”

“Sure.” Tsukuyo cut her off. “That’s fine then.”

She stood up, shoes clacking on the roof tile, and Sarutobi remained seated, frowning petulantly at her. Yeah, the romanticizing really had to stay in the recycle bin. She should really empty that folder out sometime.

“What d’you wanna eat?” Tsukuyo asked, moving to the gutter, even as the other woman’s glare pierced her back like so many kunai.

“Why are you like this,” Sarutobi said, mostly to herself, it seemed.

 _Right back at you,_ Tsukuyo thought, and jumped off the edge.

  


They kept doing it like this for months on end. ‘Accidentally’ meeting up – even though Tsukuyo was sure Sarutobi was hanging out around the same neighbourhood on purpose, and that she herself had been going there on purpose, no matter how much she tried to convince herself otherwise – and then totally not going on a date. Even though they take turns paying, and definitely engaged in more violence that anyone else around them. (Tsukuyo has been informed that this last piece does not actually constitute flirting, but has yet to be convinced.)

It’s almost silly – how they could be doing so much more than having dinner and talking about the relative benefits of men in society (which, according to Sarutobi, are A, reproducing, and B, reproducing). How Sarutobi can’t stay in an apartment more than a week at a time, but would no doubt be safe if she moved to Yoshiwara. How Tsukuyo could reach out and touch her without needing an excuse, a plausible deniability.

Yet they continued on, endlessly performing friendship (as much as either of them knew how) to avoid the inevitable, as if their potential relationship were the end of the Earth, an explosion that would roast them all alive. They were both too stubborn to do anything else – and, Tsukuyo reasoned, deep in denial, too volatile to work.

 _We don’t even really like each other,_ she argued, fruitlessly.

Ah, something inside her – the part of her brain the produced all the gay thoughts, no doubt – said; but you don’t _not_ like each other, either, do you?

And that was the problem.

  


Something landed on Tsukuyo. Something very heavy, and decidedly human-shaped. In the sleepy darkness, she reached under her pillow for a kunai, and tried to stab it, just in case it was a demon or something equally terrible. Like a man.

“Ow!” the thing screeched as Tsukuyo’s kunai definitely scraped something. “What was that for, Tsukki! I come here to stay safe and you _stab_ me? I knew you were awful, but this is rude even for you!”

“Ah, it really is a demon,” she said, attempting to sit up with some difficulty as Sarutobi was sitting indignantly on her legs. “What do you mean, to stay safe?” she continued even as Sarutobi started a whole new train of insults.

“Someone bombed me,” she said, sounding far less bothered about that than she was about the small cut she’d just sustained. “They didn’t leave a note, or at least I didn’t see any before I got out, so I don’t know who it was – which makes me kind of wonder what the point is, you know, because if they’re trying to threaten me, how am I supposed to know who to feel threatened by? It’s awful terrorism, Tsukki, you should remember that, in case you ever feel like bombing anyone – leave a note. It’s only polite. Like, P.S., this is from Tsukki, ‘kay?”

Tsukuyo’s eyes were completely glazed over. Double-glazed, even. Like a ham. “Uh huh,” she said absently. “So, what – is your place totally trashed, then?”

“It _blew up,_ Tsukki. Of course it’s trashed,” Sarutobi said imperiously, still crushing Tsukuyo’s legs with her terrible body weight and apparently forgetting which series she was in. (Explosions don’t mean anything in this manga, Tsukuyo reasoned; they’re almost always just a smoke bomb disguised as a plot device. The gorilla really was lazy.)

“Right,” Tskuyo muttered, feeling her legs finally shrivel up and die. All at once, she bucked her knees up and chucked Sarutobi off her and onto the floor, where she gave an indignant yelp. “You can sleep down there then.”

“Unbelievable!” Sarutobi cried. “I come running to your arms for shelter and this is how you act?! I should file for spousal abuse, that would show you–”

“Hang on,” Tsukuyo frowned over the side of the bed at her, “I thought we were deliberately not talking about it?”

“Well,” Sarutobi threw her hair behind her shoulders, attempting to regain the dignity she never had to begin with, “I’m sick of it, Tsukki, sick to death – months and months you’ve kept me waiting, and we’re not teenagers, you know, we don’t need to do this, oh, is she into girls, I wonder if she likes me, it’s so juvenile, really.”

It was all Tsukuyo could do to stare dumbfounded at her. She’d been so sure Sarutobi thought the same thing she did – that they were avoiding it, that they’d be too messy, any number of things – that to hear that Tsukuyo had left her waiting? That she’d been expecting her to make a move this whole time? Was frankly a huge shock to her system. Maybe that’s what you get when you never talk about your feelings, or the ones that actually matter, anyway.

“I’m being serious, you know!” Sarutobi got up and leaned a knee on the bed, one of her hands, frigid from running around in the middle of the night, grabbing Tsukuyo by the robe she slept in. “I know what you think of me, but I’m being serious, Tsukki! You don’t have to tiptoe around me, you know, I can handle it! I’m a mature woman! I have mature needs!”

Propped up on her elbows, Tsukuyo couldn’t quite grasp the reality of the situation. Sarutobi was hovering over her, the moonlight from the open window illuminating her to the point where she looked like a single frozen lightning bolt. “If that’s what you want, you know there’s many women here who can–”

Sarutobi shook her roughly. She deserved that one, at least. “Have you gone deaf? Is this selective hearing? If you’re going to reject me, Tsukki, go ahead and do it. I know you like to be all cool and aloof and detached, but I think I deserve that at least.”

“No, I– no. That’s not– I just didn’t know what to say. Sorry. Hang on.” Tsukuyo sat up against the wall and rubbed her eyes. Sarutobi perched on the very edge of the bed, meeting her eyes fiercely. “I always thought,” Tsukuyo said quietly, “that it wouldn’t work out. You know, ‘cause we always argue. That’s why I haven’t…”

“Oh, Tsukki,” Sarutobi said fondly, “you beautiful idiot. Listen,” she continued, moving to take up more than her previously allocated one square inch of the bed. “I argue with everyone. Or mostly everyone. I suppose it depends, you know, but I can’t seem to help myself, generally speaking, and–“

Catching Tsukuyo’s impatient glare, she cut herself off and got back on track with the grace of a drunk rhino. “Anyway, I think you’re the same, right? It’s just – just words, in the end, you know, and we don’t – I don’t think we’ve ever argued about anything that mattered, have we?”

Well, certainly, Sarutobi had made any number of jokes about Tsukuyo being a sex worker. Which she wasn’t. Not that there was anything wrong with that, but she wasn’t, and the deliberate falsehoods got on her nerves more than the actual content of the jokes. But… they _were_ jokes. Bad ones, but nothing that annoyed her for more than an hour at a time, and certainly nothing that bothered her emotionally. Frowning at the middle distance, Tsukuyo said at length, “Well, I guess not.”

“You see?” Sarutobi smiled gently at her. If it were any other time, Tsukuyo might get annoyed at being patronized, but mostly she just felt hopeful. “I – well, it’s up to you, but… I don’t think it would get in the way. Besides, I don’t think I could be with someone who _didn’t_ argue with me, anyway; that’s so not my type.”

Tsukuyo considered this. And quickly realised she didn’t have to consider it at all. “Okay. So, do you want to try, then?”

“Of course I do, you wench, that’s what I’ve been saying,” Sarutobi sighed, and then demanded, “now kiss me.”

Tsukuyo kissed her. It was – well, it was a kiss. It was soft, warm, close – on face value, almost unremarkable. But, reaching up to touch Sarutobi’s neck, her cheek, her hair; feeling her hands on Tsukuyo’s arms, back, waist – it felt as if a new universe was being created between them, a whole lifetime becoming corporeal from the very moonlight as it touched their skin. It felt like an oath, and for the life of her, Tsukuyo couldn’t remember why she had waited so long.

**Author's Note:**

> @kiheidie on twitter
> 
> [tunglejungle post](http://emily-420.tumblr.com/post/167081694843/title-gravity-fandompairing-gintama-tsukisachi)
> 
> [ko-fi](http://ko-fi.com/B0B6A7KG)


End file.
